2.  What is learnt in verse is longer retained in memory, and sooner recollected.  The like sounds and the like number of syllables exceedingly assist the remembrance.  And it may often happen, that the end of a song running in the mind may be an effectual means to keep off some temptation, or to incline to some duty, when a word of scripture is not upon the thoughts.

3.  This will be a constant furniture for the minds of children, that they may have something to think upon when alone, and sing over to themselves.  This may sometimes give their thoughts a divine turn, and raise a young meditation.  Thus they will not be forced to seek relief for an emptiness of mind out of the loose and dangerous sonnets of the age.

4.  These Divine Songs may be a pleasant and proper matter for their daily or weekly worship, to sing one in the family at such time as the parents or governors shall appoint; and therefore I have confin’d the verse to the most usual psalm tunes.

The greatest part of this little book was composed several years ago, at the request of a friend, who has been long engaged in the work of catechising a very great number of children of all kinds, and with abundant skill and success.  So that you will find here nothing that savours of a party:  the children of high and low degree, of the Church of England or Dissenters, baptized in infancy or not, may all join together in these songs.  And as I have endeavoured to sink the language to the level of a child’s understanding, and yet to keep it (if possible) above contempt; so I have designed to profit all (if possible) and offend none.  I hope the more general the sense is, these composures may be of the more universal use and service.

I have added at the end an attempt or two of Sonnets on Moral Subjects for children, with an air of pleasantry, to provoke some fitter pen to write a little book of them.  My talent doth not lie that way, and a man on the borders of the grave has other work.  Besides, if I had health or leisure to lay out this way, it should be employ’d in finishing the Psalms, which I have so long promised the world.

May the Almighty God make you faithful in this important work of education:  may he succeed your cares with his abundant graces, that the rising generation of Great Britain may be a glory amongst the nations, a pattern to the Christian world, and a blessing to the earth.

Divine Songs

For

Children.

Song 1.
A General Song of Praise to God.

1 How glorious is our Heavenly King,
Who reigns above the sky! 
How shall a child presume to sing
His dreadful majesty?

2 How great his power is none can tell,
Nor think how large his grace;
Not men below, nor saints that dwell
On high before his face.

3 Not angels that stand round the Lord
Can search his secret will;
But they perform his heavenly word,
And sing his praises still.